AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft Documentation
Brief set of AddOn Studio 2010 help and documentation as time permits. :) Is inteded to provide filler information for those who like to read more, or those who dont necessarily have a lot of experiance with some or any of these areas. Real docs one day forthcoming. Home: AddOn Studio 2010, Change History: AddOn Studio 2010 History, Support: Issue Tracker and Forums, Twitter: @AddonStudio2010 About the IDE and AddOn Development An introduction. With AddOn Studio 2010 it can be decievingly easy to get started and see your first AddOn running in WoW within in minutes, even with no real experience. However, game development, and especially in combination with a modern fully-featured IDE like AddOn Studio, can also be one of the most difficult and demanding things you could undertake, at least as far as technically creative endeavors go. An "IDE" is an Integrated Development Environment, where lots of tools and facilities are clustered together in one application to attempt to make things more convenient, to save time, and help you focus more on what you are really trying to do, so the theory goes... Many times however this doesn't actually happen. The complexities of mastering the development environment can be a daunting task in itself, in addition to everything else. With all this in mind, I'm going to do my rendition of "breaking things down" for how to get started with WoW AddOn development and AddOn Studio, especially for those who aren't already hobbyist or professional programmers and might be just starting out, or were just curious. Getting it running Installation and running for the first time. The instructions on the home page are pretty much dead on already, and hopefully very simple. This is meant to be a bit of handholding and not a in depth technically engrosing installation section. I'm jsut goign to break down what these thigs mean for anyone who isnt familiar or wants a little more detail about whats going on. 1. Install the free Microsoft Isolated Shell This installs a stand alone version of Visual Studio, and is free both in not costig you anyting, and legally, and actually is very encouraged by Microsoft themselves, who sepnt a good bit of money so you could do things exactly like this. The install should go without a hitch, and is fairly freindly considering its a very low volume, very developer oriented install. You wont need anyting else besides AddOn Studio itself. Depending on the things you are missing, it may have to install a lot but its fine. No, you do not need Visual Studio and installing this will not interfere with an existing Visual Studio install of any kind. 2. Install AddOn Studio AddOn Studio 2010 has a very simple install process, although it's a slightly manual process. All thats involved is downloading the .zip file from the download link, opening the zip file, and then copying the 'aswow' folder in the zip file to a folder on your hard drive. Yep thats it... thats all you have to do. I would suggest creating a folder like d:\apps and coping the 'aswow' folder into that, so that you end up with 'd:\apps\aswow', which avoids mishapps in Program Files and is a lot easier to find This type of install is often refered to as a "Portable Install", and just runs from the files where ever they sit, and needs no installer and has no uninstaller. You are free to place the files anywhere you like, and move them at any time. You are free to have multiple copies, though I would only run one version at a time, even if you start more than one copy. You can also just delete the files anytime you want. Thus to install a new version, you can simply rename or delete the old one, and follow the install steps again. You only have to install the ISO shell, in step 1., only once ever. 3. Run AddOn Studio AddOn Studio 2010 Getting Started Hints and help for getting started. Legalities For those who are Legally aware, or are otherwise concerned or interested. *World of Warcraft - AddOn Policy *Blizzard World of Warcraft - Terms of Use *Blizzard BattleNet - Terms of use *Historic "Glider" Summary Judgement *Blizzard General Legal FAQ and Copyright Infringement Summary Reminders Link of the day: Old Russian Tutoral - but one of the best I've seen (English Tranlation) Got to love the brutal honesty in the commentary and also in the ensuing discussion about WoW in general. God save our English language. :)